CfP: Collective Wisdom: Workshop I: Early modern English and German collecting networks and practice
Early modern English and German collecting networks and practice: medicine and natural philosophy
(8-9 June 2018, Leopoldina, German National Academy of Sciences, Halle)
The shift from a purposefully and playfully disordered
Kunstkammer to the well-ordered Enlightenment museum is known.
What has yet to be explored fully is the process through which this
transformation occurred. This two-day workshop will investigate the role
of learned societies in that transformation between
England and German-speaking lands, focusing on the relatively
understudied period from the foundation of the Leopoldina as a medical
association (1652) to the start of the Royal Society Presidency of
Joseph Banks (1778). It will explore why it was that physicians
seemed to have such
a seminal role in collecting and connoisseurship in both regions. Did
medics in the Leopoldina, the Society of Antiquaries in London and
the Royal Society have similar collecting practices, strategies, and
underlying reasons for collecting? What were their contributions to the
creation of wonder cabinets and early museums, as well as their
development of norms of connoisseurship and classification
of knowledge?
Participants will engage with the archives of the Leopoldina and the Francke Foundation’s extant
Kunst- und Naturalienkammer (art and natural history cabinet) in Halle, a rare survivor fro the 17th century. The
Kunst- und Naturalienkammer was assembled as a teaching tool for
children in the Francke Orphanage and Hospital, where a hands-on, and
playful curriculum using objects and instruments, the practice of
crafts, and musical
performance was prized. This workshop will thus be accompanied by a
concert of baroque chamber music to raise public awareness of the work
of the Francke Foundation, an instance of collecting for charity.
The workshop is also being held during the Handel Festival in Halle.
Speakers
include Julia Schmidt-Funke, Dominik Hunniger, Vera Keller, Fabian
Krämer, Anna Maerker, Anna Marie Roos, and Kelly Whitmer.
This workshop is part of a very recent networking grant award from the AHRC:
Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy.
(PI: A.M. Roos, Co-I: Vera Keller).
Please send a 200-word abstract for a 20-minute paper and a CV to Anna Marie Roos (aroos@lincoln.ac.uk) by 8 May 2018.
Early career researchers and established scholars are welcome.